


Winning the War

by madeof_it



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Existential Angst, F/M, Spies & Secret Agents, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-26
Updated: 2014-06-26
Packaged: 2018-02-06 09:10:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1852489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madeof_it/pseuds/madeof_it
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus is a spy for the werewolves and he hates it and wants to go home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winning the War

He hated being in the middle of it all, with both Masters breathing down his neck (though only one of them was truly his leader). There were so many nights he stayed awake, hidden in abandoned buildings or dense forests, searching for important information that fell from hesitant mouths to his sharp ears.

This night, he was still as the stones surrounding their camp, his own breathing masked by the snores of his comrades. He hated them, hated who they were and what they represented, hated the things they stood for and the actions they carried out.

Of course, he couldn't show this -- as the spy planted in their midst, he was doing this for Dumbledore, for the Order, for Harry, for Tonks and his unborn child ("it's a boy", she'd shouted before he left, toppling them onto their bed in her excitement and ever-present clumsiness). His love for them overshadowed his disgust with the people (could they even be called that?) he was trapped with until who knew when.

Someone next to him snorted, and he stiffened in his blankets. No, they were still asleep, and he could hear the rustle of them turning over and adjusting in their attempts to find some comfort in this desolate landscape. A few more minutes of struggling to stay awake and he drifted off into his own restless sleep.

\-------

The next morning, he struggled to hide his distaste for the way they scarfed (wolfed?) down their breakfasts, half of them not even bothering to sear them on the hot pans covering the still-burning coals. Raw meat. He couldn't stomach that, even with what he was, even with the years of his peers teasing him about how he probably liked his steaks bloody and freshly killed, even with his mother's oddly-endearing-if-misguided attempts to cook things more to "his taste" after his "affliction".

Even worse was the stench laying their camp. Was it irony that these werewolves, with their heightened senses were simultaneously the best and worst smelling (best in that they had the ability, worst in that they stank). Half of them were the same terrifying hybrids they Greyback had become, living a life in a sort of limbo between human and wolf. They were the worst, with their patches of matted fur and the dried blood (not theirs, of course) that caked parts of their skin.

Just being near them made him despise himself a bit. He couldn't help thinking of the others...would anyone else be able to hold this facade in the face of the same creatures that thrust his life upon them? Could anyone understand his own fear of turning into them, his regret at being completely unable to stop all (or any, really) of the fatalities and "conversions" their unprovoked attacks caused?

The worst was when his brain, half-starved for affection and any sort of human interaction (real human, not these monsters), spat out hateful things about his own father. _Why couldn't he protect me? Couldn't they have just let me die? It might have been better, for all I've seen._

Without fail, though, those thoughts circled back to his own little family, and the pressures he faced with every sunset, every dawn. His son. His wife. Could he protect them? Not against these creatures, not after seeing the things they did to their victims. They _played_ with them before they did them the small grace of finally killing them, and they often used their loved ones as weapons, too.

No. He was hidden in this camp, gagging at the smell of death and rotting, to try and save his own from any fate like this. The more he could find out, the better off they'd be, the more likely they'd win the battle, then the war, and the sooner things could go back to being safe and wholesome and not so terrifying anymore.

\-------

It was another dark night, and the silence filled his ears. He was supposed to be on guard, one of the four assigned at all times, but he could feel his eyelids weighing down with his need for sleep. He'd only meant to close them for a second, he _swore_ , but suddenly he was jerking awake, the bright lights of spells firing in front of him (directly in front of him, entirely too close).

There was shouting and the noise of panic and the smell of burning, and he knew that somebody was going to be in trouble for this happening. Hoping it wouldn't be him, he cast a shield, Disillusioned himself, and flattened against the ground, silently observing the chaos around him and miraculously remaining untrampled by the numbers of magical beings racing around him.

Just when he'd convinced himself all was safe, a calloused hand grabbed him and hauled him up to his feet.

With a bit of a stammer, he managed to bite out, "You shouldn't be able to SEE me" just as he realized it was Mad-Eye Moody with his piercing magical orb that was dragging him towards a clearing as the others continued fighting ( _wizards against werewolves, it might never end_ he thought sadly).

Once free of the battle, and amazingly unscathed, Moody pressed a small cork into his palm. There was a tug behind his navel as the eye fell away in space and all he heard was the older man's shout of "I should have saved the whole bottle for you!"

\-------

When he next opened his eyes, there was sunlight streaming through a dusty window and he felt clean, really clean, for the first time in months. Whose bed was this? Whose clothes? Peering down, he realised it was his own, and glee bubbled up within him. Leaping out of bed, he ignored the lingering aches in his bones and the growling of his stomach, favouring instead a lap around his house until he found what he'd been looking for.

There, seated on his beloved couch with the patchwork arms ("Like your own suit", Sirius had affectionately noted when he'd seen it) was his wife, no longer bursting with life, but holding it in her arms, face shining with tears that streamed down her cheeks as Remus walked over to her and met his son.

No matter the costs before that moment, no matter the payments to be made after it, in that flicker in time he felt like he'd already won the war.


End file.
